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Home Preface 5 Planes of Existence Introduction Five Planes of Manifestation A to Z Contact Related Information BIBLE VERSES |
ASCETICISM, OR AUSTERITYA symbol of the voluntary abandonment of outgoing activities in preparation for a new form or course of manifestation. It is an inbreathing of the ego or Self prior to an outbreathing of renewed life. "As early as the creation myths we saw how the Creator of the universe prepared himself for his work by the practice of tapas (asceticism); in which word the ancient idea of the 'heat' which serves to promote the incubation of the egg of the universe blends with the ideas of the exertion, fatigue, self-renunciation, by means of which the creator is transmuted (entirely or in part) into the universe which he proposes to create. According to this conception, everything that is great in the universe is dependent on tapas,"-DEUSSEN, Phil. of Upanishads, p. 66. The perfection of the manifest Self is the absolutely necessary end of the Soul-process, and is the condition that must be attained ere a life-cycle can close in the complete indrawal of the Self. The toil and fervour of the Self to perfect its manifested Life, and its renunciation of all outgoing energy, become the preparation for the next life cycle. The actual then disappears into the potential, which then is, as it were, a germ or egg out of which a new universe, outer and inner, proceeds into actuality. Everything great is dependent on asceticism, because perfection attained implies the subjugation and cessation of every activity of the lower nature in its widest sense. "The souls on their entrance into heaven are apostrophised :—'Which invincible by tapas, have won their way by tapas to the light, that have accomplished the severest tapas,-to these now enter in' (Rig-Veda, X. 154, 2).”— Ibid., p. 66. The spiritual egos or individual souls on the higher mental plane having become perfected through their efforts in a stage of their progress upward to the truth, withdraw entirely from the lower life, and enter into the consciousness of the buddhic plane. (It is obvious that the asceticism practised in India by "Yogins," has its origin in a literal and mistaken interpretation of the sacred writings.) |
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ABSTINENCE
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